documenta 14 is not owned by anyone in particular. It is shared among its visitors and artists, readers and writers, as well as all those whose work made it happen. We write incarcerated by the myth of individual authorship. Whether poetry or prose (or whatever this is) I blow out hard from these puffed-up lungs. […]
You are teaching a Classical Mythology class and you have reached the topic of “Creation Stories” (either this is early in the course or later, after “Epic Myths”). In today’s class you want to compare and contrast ancient Greek, Roman and Near-Eastern myths about the origins of the universe. You will discuss (and the students […]
Just before attending a gallery tour of the Wexner exhibition Cindy Sherman: Imitation of Life by artist Sheilah Restack (Wilson), my friend, artist Suzanne Silver, with whom I had taught the class Drawing Ideas a year ago, handed me a copy of Amy Sillman’s zine The O.G., the eleventh issue of which was focused on […]
Today in my class I, Tiresias: Ovid’s Mythical Women and Contemporary Feminist Art, we are reading books 5 and 6 of the Roman poet’s epic Metamorphoses. Midway through book 5, we encounter the song of the Muses (which includes, among others, the tale of Proserpina/Persephone’s abduction by Pluto/Hades) which is part of a contest with […]
I didn’t go to Venice this year and so I missed Mark Bradford’s Tomorrow is Another Day at the US Pavilion. This means that these reflections are limited to the accounts of those people who I have spoken to who did see Bradford’s work in the flesh, as well as images and written accounts online […]
‘I come in fear, an exile’s book, sent to this city: kind reader, give me a gentle hand, in my weariness: don’t shun me in fear, in case I bring you shame: not a line of this paper teaches about love. Such is my author’s fate he shouldn’t try, the wretch, to hide it with […]
In Pythagoras’ speech in the 15th and final book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the vegetarian philosopher of rebirth tells the tale of the phoenix bird (Met. 15. 392-407). una est, quae reparet seque ipsa reseminet, ales: Assyrii phoenica vocant; non fruge neque herbis, sed turis lacrimis et suco vivit amomi. haec ubi quinque suae conplevit saecula […]
I just proposed a so-called ‘First Year Seminar’ (a one credit class for Ohio State freshmen) on the topic of ‘Selfie Culture’. It will examine the history, art and politics of the selfie from ancient Rome to now and I will be discussing artists such as Cindy Sherman, David Hammons and Petra Cortright as well […]
In their project The Rumors of the World, Lebanese artists Joana Hadjithomas and Khali Joreige investigate the abundance of spamming and scamming on the internet and the resulting questions of trust and the construction of identity in the post-internet world. In addition to installations of video works in which actors play the roles of the […]
Yesterday I visited the new exhibition at the Columbus Museum of Art – A Dangerous Woman: Subversion and Surrealism in the Art of Honoré Sharrer. It was a revelation and, as a Classicist, I was immediately struck by Sharrer’s feminist reworkings of Greek and Roman myths, often mediated by art historical predecessors. I am sure […]